Asticou, Maine, July 16, 1915.
_To the Editor of the New York Times:_
The inferences of the first importance are military and naval. In the
conduct of war on land it has been demonstrated during the past eleven
months that success in battle depends primarily on the possession and
skillful use of artillery and machine guns. The nation which can
command the largest quantity of artillery in great variety of calibre
and range, has developed the amplest and quickest means of
transporting artillery and supplies of all sorts, and whose troops can
use mortars, howitzers, and cannon at the highest speed and with the
greatest accuracy will have important advantages over an enemy less
well provided, or less skillful. Before every assault by infantry
artillery must sweep and plow the position to be captured, and so soon
as the enemy has lost a trench or a redoubt the enemy's artillery will
try to destroy the successful troops with shell and shrapnel, before
the enemy's infantry makes a counter-attack. Whenever troops have open
ground to cross before they reach the intrenchments of the enemy, they
encounter a withering fire from machine guns, which is so effective
that assaults over open ground have, for the most part, to be
undertaken at night or in fog, or by some sort of surprise.
In general the defense has great advantage over the attack, as regards
expenditure of both men and munitions. So decided is the advantage of
the defense, that Germany can dismiss all those apprehensions about
invasion by the Russian hordes with which she set out on this war.
Success in military movements on a large scale depends on the means of
transportation at hand; and these means of transportation must include
railroads, automobiles, and horse wagons, the function of the
automobile being of high importance wherever the roads are tolerably
good. There is little use for cavalry in the new fighting; for
aeroplanes can do better scouting and more distant raiding than
cavalry ever could, and large bodies of infantry with their
indispensable supplies can be moved faster and further by automobiles
than cavalry could ever be.
The aeroplane also defeats the former use of cavalry to screen from
the enemy's view the movements of troops and their trains behind the
actual fronts. Moreover, cavalry cannot stand at all against the new
artillery and the machine gun. An old-fashioned cavalry charge in the
open is useless, and indeed impossible. Aerial warfare is still
undeveloped, but the war has proved that the aeroplane, even in its
present imperfect condition, is a useful instrument. The Zeppelin, on
the other hand, seems to be too fragile and too unmanageable for
effective use in war. Rifle fire is of far less importance than
artillery and machine gun fire; and, indeed, the abandonment of the
rifle as the principal arm for infantry is clearly suggested.
Elaborate forts made of iron and concrete are of little use against a
competent invader, and fortifications round about cities are of no use
for protection against an enemy that possesses adequate artillery. For
the defense of a frontier, or of the approaches to a railroad junction
or a city, a system of trenches is immeasurably superior to forts,
particularly if behind the trenches a network of railways or of smooth
highways exists. Wounds are often inflicted by jagged pieces of metal
which carry bits of dirty clothing and skin into the wounds, and the
wounded often lie on the ground for hours or even days before aid can
reach them. Hence the surgery of this war is largely the surgery of
infected wounds, and not of smooth aseptic cuts and holes. A
considerable percentage of deaths and permanent disabilities among the
wounded is the inevitable result. Surgeons and dressers are more
exposed to death and wounds than in former wars, because of the large
use of artillery of long range, the field hospitals being often under
fire.
From these changes in the methods of war on land it may be safely
inferred that a nation which would be strong in war on land must be
strong in all sorts of manufacturing, and particularly in the
metallurgical industries. A nation chiefly devoted to agriculture and
the ancient trades cannot succeed in modern war, unless it can beg,
borrow, or buy from sympathizers or allies the necessary artillery and
munitions. No amount of courage and devotion in troops can make up for
an inadequate supply of artillery, machine guns, shells, and shrapnel,
or for the lack of ample means of rapid transportation. Only in a
rough country without good roads, like the United States in 1861-65,
or Serbia or Russia now, can the rifle, light artillery, and horse or
ox wagons win any considerable success; and in such a country the
trench method can bring about a stalemate, if the combatants are well
matched in strength, diligence, and courage.
The changes in naval warfare are almost equally remarkable. Mines and
submarines can make the offensive operation of dreadnoughts and
cruisers near ports practically impossible, and can inflict great
damage on an enemy's commerce. Hence important modifications in the
rules concerning effective blockade. In squadron actions victory will
probably go to the side which has the gun of longest range
well-manned. Defeated war vessels sink as a rule with almost all on
board. Commercial vessels can seldom be taken into port as prizes, and
must therefore be sunk to make their capture effective. There have
been no actions between large fleets; but the indications are that a
defeated fleet would be sunk for the most part, the only vessels to
escape being some of the speedier sort. Crews would go down with their
vessels. Shore batteries of long-range guns can keep at a distance a
considerable fleet, and can sink vessels that come too near. Mines and
shore batteries together can prevent the passage of war vessels
through straits ten to fifteen miles wide, no matter how powerful the
vessel's batteries may be. Every war vessel is now filled with
machinery of various sorts, much of which is delicate or easily
disabled. Hence a single shell exploding violently in a sensitive spot
may render a large ship unmanageable, and therefore an easy victim. A
crippled ship will probably be sunk, unless a port is near.
To build and keep in perfect condition a modern fleet requires
dockyards and machine shops of large capacity, and great metallurgical
industries always in operation within the country which maintains the
fleet. No small nation can create a powerful fleet; and no nation
which lives chiefly by agriculture can maintain one. A great naval
power must be a mining, manufacturing, and commercial power, with a
sound banking system available all over the world.
The war has proved that it is possible for a combination of strong
naval powers to sweep off the ocean in a few months all the warships
of any single great power, except submarines, and all its commerce.
Germany has already suffered that fate, and incidentally the loss of
all her colonies, except portions of German East Africa and Kamerun,
both of which remnants are vigorously assailed and will soon be lost.
Nevertheless, she still exports and imports through neutral countries,
though to a small amount in comparison with the volume of her normal
trade. Here is another illustration of the general truth that colonies
are never so good to trade with as independent and prosperous nations.
Again the war has proved that it is not possible in a normal year to
reduce by blockade or non-intercourse the food supply of a large
nation to the point of starvation, or even of great distress, although
the nation has been in the habit of importing a considerable fraction
of its food supply. An intelligent population will make many economies
in its food, abstain from superfluities, raise more food from its
soil, use grains for food instead of drinks, and buy food from neutral
countries so long as its hard money holds out. Any large country which
has a long seaboard or neutral neighbors can probably prevent its
noncombatant population from suffering severely from want of food or
clothing while at war. This would not be true of the districts in
which actual fighting takes place or over which armies pass; for in
the regions of actual battle modern warfare is terribly
destructive--as Belgium, Northern France, Poland, and Serbia know.
A manufacturing people whose commercial vessels are driven off the
seas will, of course, suffer the loss of such raw materials of its
industries as habitually came to it over seas in its own bottoms--a
loss mitigated, however, by the receipt of some raw materials from or
through neutral countries. This abridgment of its productive
industries will, in the long run, greatly diminish its powers of
resistance in war; but much time may be needed for the full
development of this serious disability.
Because of the great costliness of the artillery, munitions of war,
and means of transportation used in the present war, the borrowings of
all the combatant nations are heavy beyond any precedent; so that
already all the nations involved have been compelled to raise the
rates of interest on the immense loans they have put upon the market.
The burdens thus being prepared for the coming generations in the
belligerent nations will involve very high rates of taxation in all
the countries now at war. If these burdens continue to accumulate for
two or three years more, no financier, however experienced and
far-seeing, can imagine today how the resulting loans are to be paid
or how the burden of taxation necessary to pay the interest on them
can be borne or how the indemnities probably to be exacted can be paid
within any reasonable period by the defeated nation or nations.
It follows from these established facts that a small nation--a nation
of not more than fifteen millions, for example--can have no
independent existence in Europe except as a member of a federation of
States having similar habits, tendencies, and hopes, and united in an
offensive and defensive alliance, or under guarantees given by a group
of strong and trustworthy nations. The firm establishment of several
such federations, or the giving of such guarantees by a group of
powerful and faith-keeping nations ought to be one of the outcomes of
the war of 1914-15. Unless some such arrangement is reached, no small
State will be safe from conquest and absorption by any strong,
aggressive military power which covets it--not even if its people live
chiefly by mining and manufacturing as the Belgians did.
The small States, being very determined to exist and to obtain their
natural or historical racial boundaries, the problem of permanent or
any durable peace in Europe resolves itself into this: How can the
small or smaller nations be protected from attack by some larger
nation which believes that might makes right and is mighty in
industries, commerce, finance, and the military and naval arts? The
experience gained during the past year proves that there is but one
effective protection against such a power, namely, a firm league of
other powers--not necessarily numerous--which together are stronger in
industries, commerce, finance, and the military and naval arts than
the aggressive and ambitious nation which heartily believes in its own
invincibility and cherishes the ambition to conquer and possess.
Such a league is the present combination of Great Britain, France,
Russia, Italy, and Japan against the aggressive Central Monarchies and
Turkey; but this combination was not formed deliberately and with
conscious purpose to protect small States, to satisfy natural
national aspirations, and to make durable peace possible by removing
both fear of invasion and fear of the cutting off of overseas food and
raw materials. In spite of the lack of an explicit and comprehensive
purpose to attain these wise and precious ends, the solidity of the
alliance during a year of stupendous efforts to resist military
aggression on the part of Germany and Austria-Hungary certainly
affords good promise of success for a somewhat larger league in which
all the European nations--some, like the Scandinavian and the Balkans,
by representation in groups--and the United States should be included.
Such a league would have to act through a distinct and permanent
council or commission which would not serve arbitrary power, or any
peculiar national interest, and would not in the least resemble the
"Concert of Europe," or any of the disastrous special conferences of
diplomatists and Ministers for Foreign Affairs, called after wars
since that of 1870-71 to "settle" the questions the wars raised.
The experience of the past twelve months proves that such a league
could prevent any nation which disobeyed its orders from making use of
the oceans and from occupying the territory of any other nation.
Reduction of armaments, diminution of taxation, and durable peace
would ensue as soon as general confidence was established that the
league would fairly administer international justice, and that its
military and naval forces were ready and effective. Its function would
be limited to the prevention and punishment of violation of
international agreements, or, in other words, to the enforcement of
treaty obligations, until new treaties were made.
The present alliance is of good promise in three important
respects--its members refuse to make any separate peace, they
co-operate cordially and efficiently in military measures, and the
richer members help the poorer financially. These policies have been
hastily devised and adopted in the midst of strenuous fighting on an
immense scale. If deliberately planned and perfected in times of
peace, they could be made in the highest degree effective toward
durable peace.
The war has demonstrated that the international agreements for the
mitigation of the horrors of war, made by treaties, conferences, and
conventions in times of peace, may go for nothing in time of war;
because they have no sanction, or, in other words, lack penalties
capable of systematic enforcement. To provide the lacking sanction and
the physical force capable of compelling the payment of penalties for
violating international agreements would be one of the best functions
of the international council which the present alliance foreshadows.
Some years would probably be required to satisfy the nations concerned
that the sanction was real and the force trustworthy and sufficient.
The absolute necessity of inventing and applying a sanction for
international law, if Europe is to have international peace and any
national liberty, will be obvious to any one who has once perceived
that the present war became inevitable when Austria-Hungary, in
violation of an international agreement to which she was herself a
party, seized and absorbed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and became general
and fierce when Germany, under Prussian lead, in violation of an
international agreement to which she was herself a party, entered and
plundered neutralized Belgium.
A strong, trustworthy international alliance to preserve the freedom
of the seas under all circumstances would secure for Great Britain and
her federated commonwealths everything secured by the burdensome
two-navies policy which now secures the freedom of the seas for
British purposes. The same international alliance would secure for
Germany the same complete freedom of the seas which in times of peace
between Germany and Great Britain she has long enjoyed by favor of
Great Britain, but has lost in time of war with the Triple Entente.
This security, with the general acceptance of the policy of the "open
door," would fully meet Germany's need of indefinite expansion for her
manufacturing industries and her commerce, and of room "in the sun"
for her surplus population.
It is a safe inference from the events of the past six months that the
longer the war lasts the more significant will be the political and
social changes which result from it. It is not to be expected, and
perhaps not to be desired, that the ruling class in the countries
autocratically governed should themselves draw this inference at
present, but all lovers of freedom and justice will find consolation
for the prolongation of the war in this hopeful reflection.
To devise the wise constitution of an international council or
commission with properly limited powers, and to determine the most
promising composition of an international army and an international
navy are serious tasks, but not beyond the available international
wisdom and goodwill, provided that the tasks be intrusted to
international publicists, business men of large experience, and
successful administrators, rather than to professional diplomatists
and soldiers. To dismiss such a noble enterprise with the remark that
it is "academic," or beyond the reach of "practical" politics, is
unworthy of courageous and humane men; for it seems now to be the only
way out of the horrible abyss into which civilization has fallen. At
any rate, some such machinery must be put into successful operation
before any limitation of national armaments can be effected. The war
has shown to what a catastrophe competitive national arming has led,
and would probably again lead the most civilized nations of Europe.
Shall the white race despair of escaping from this hell? The only way
of escape in sight is the establishment of a rational international
community. Should the enterprise fail after fair trial, the world will
be no worse off than it was in July, 1914, or is today.
Whoever studies the events of the past year with some knowledge of
political philosophy and history, and with the love of his neighbor in
his heart, will discover, amid the horrors of the time and its moral
chaos, three hopeful leadings for humanitarian effort, each involving
a great constructive invention. He will see that humanity needs
supremely a sanction for international law, rescue from alcoholism,
and a sound basis for just and unselfish human relations in the great
industries, and particularly in the machinery industries. The war has
brought out all three of these needs with terrible force and
vividness. Somehow they must be met, if the white race is to succeed
in "the pursuit of happiness," or even to hold the gains already made.